Ok, I honestly really don't have an excuse. I mean, I've been dealing with some stuff, but yeah I've basically just been procrastinating. Sorryyyy, I know. I always hate it when authors do tis and now I'm one of them. :P. Anyway things are going to start getting more interesting now as we're coming closer to the end of the story. Thanks for all the support and I hope you enjoy it!

After all this was over, Archer was pretty sure the tempo of the beep of the heart monitor would be permanently ingrained in his brain.

That wasn't his biggest problem though. Natasha talked to the doctor today. He wasn't supposed to listen in, but he did. They wanted to know when to pull the life support, since he wasn't getting better. He didn't know what she told them to do, but she must've told them to wait since they hadn't changed anything yet.

Archer hoped he would wake up. No. Archer needed him to wake up. What was he supposed to do without him? He couldn't live with Ana's family forever, they had enough of their own problems. It wasn't just the living situation the made him so desperate for Clint to wake. He just couldn't lose another person. It wasn't fair. Especially not they way they had ended things before Clint left. Archer knew he was being a brat, but he wished he would've realized it earlier. There was nothing he could do now.

"Hey," the nurse said as she walked into the room, pulling him out of his thoughts.

"Hey," he mumbled.

"How's he doing?" She asked and walked over to switch the IVs.

"I don't know," he grumbled.

"Attitude," she warned, glancing back at Archer.

He glared at her and crossed his arms, sinking lower into the chair. "You're not my mom."

"You're not supposed to be here without a chaperone, but here we are." She shot back.

Archer didn't reply, he just sat and watched as she took notes on his vitals.

"So," she put her notebook away and turned around. "Same as yesterday."

"Surprising," Archer remarked sarcastically.

"He could still get better, Archer." She said.

"Then why were they talking to Natasha about 'pulling the plug'?"

"This is a shield hospital, they need as much space as they can get. They're just getting antsy." She sighed and looked at Clint again. "I wouldn't worry about it, ok? Natasha's smart, she won't let anything happen."

"But what if she does? She's kinda insane right now, in case you haven't noticed."

The nurse laughed before turning serious. "Then I won't let anything happen, ok?"

"You're just a nurse."

"I'm a damn good nurse, so it'll be an insult to me if he doesn't get his ass up soon."

Archer shrugged. "Yeah."

"YOUNG BARTON!" A voice roared, causing the nurse to jump and Archer to almost fall out of his chair. They looked and saw Thor standing in the doorway, along with Aurora and Jane.

"What?" Archer asked as he pushed himself back up into his chair.

"We've come to accompany you to lunch while Clint recovers from battle." Thor stated proudly, glancing sadly at the hospital bed.

"I don't really want to-"

"Come onnnn," Aurora begged.

"Just for an hour, Archer." Jane said.

"Fine," he muttered.

They said goodbye to the nurse and left, heading to a Mexican place down the street.

The four of them ate in silence for a few minutes, with Jane occasionally asking Archer mundane questions to break the silence. Eventually, Aurora started talking, and once she did, it was hard to get her to stop.

"And then I went and hung out with my Aunt Darcy. She's not really my aunt but she basically mom's friend so like that's kind of what an aunt is. She's cool. Oh wanna hear a funny story? Ok, so we were walking down a street and I waved my hand and a pole fell over! Because of my powers I guess."

Archer nearly spit out his water, Jane froze, and Thor high fived Aurora before realizing it wasn't a good thing.

"What?" Archer practically yelled.

"This is new information to me," Jane said. She was so going to kill Darcy later.

Thor frowned. "Why were we not informed?"

Aurora shrugged. "It wasn't a big deal."

"Yes it it, Rora." Archer said, leaning across the table to look at her so she knew he was serious.

He glance at her parents. "People are going to notice. They could have cameras anywhere. They could find her."

"Oh shit." Jane mumbled.

"They? You mean the people who held you hostage?" Thor asked.

"Yeah," Archer said.

"What?" Aurora frowned.

"Aurora. You might've accidentally told everyone where we are." Archer explained. She gasped and her bottom lip started quivering, about to start crying. Archer quickly tried to stop her. "Hey, hey. It's not your fault, it's an accident. Okay? You'll be okay."

"What do we need to do?" Thor asked. "To make sure we can not be found."

Archer shrugged. "I don't know, be on the lookout. I know what these guys look like, I can help." He turned back to Aurora. "And you need to learn how to control that. So more accidents don't happen."

She nodded.

They spent the rest of the lunch listening to archer describe the men and what could happen. He knew they were in danger, but he didn't really care. The incident happened in an entirely different state, so it would be harder to find them. But they still could, so they had to be careful. Either way, it was nice to have something else to worry about besides Clint.

Rory was walking down the hallway when someone slammed into her shoulder almost sending her falling to the ground.

"Hey!" She yelled, turning around to try to find the kid who obviously couldn't see when there was a person standing right in front of them. Atticus walked in the crowd of people, heading the opposite direction. He turned to look at when he heard her yell, and instead of saying something, pointed at his shoulder, then turned away.

What? Rory mouthed to him, but he was already down the hall. She sighed and turned around. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a flash of pink on her shoulder, where Atticus had pointed. She reached over and grabbed a sticky note that he must've put there when he ran into her.

Follow me.

She crumpled up the note and threw it in a nearby garbage can before chasing after him. After pushing a few kids away and aggressively apologizing (if that was a thing), she managed to get close enough to reach a hand out and grab Atticus's backpack, pulling him backwards maybe a little too forcefully (he deserved it).

"Geez," he mumbled as he caught balance again. "Do you ever chill?"

"Not really," she stated as she started walking forwards again, following the route Atticus was going. "You could've just told me to follow you, you know."

"That's so suspicious though, if anyone was watching and saw me say something to you then you started follow me, they'd know something was up."

She rolled her eyes. "This is a middle school, not the FBI."

"That's what they want you to think." He joked and turned down another less crowded hallway.

"So, what's so important that I have to miss English?"

"Give me a minute, okay?" He muttered and looked into a few classrooms, trying to find an empty one. As the bell for fourth hour rang, there were still no empty classroom. "Gosh, doesn't anyone have a field trip or something?"

Rory leaned against the wall of the classroom they stood outside of and tapped her foot impatiently. "There's no one in the hall, you could just tell me now."

"No," he hissed. "Cameras."

"Every class has cameras too," she stated. He ignored her and continued looking, starting to get noticed by students. "Come on, Atticus. I really don't want to get in trouble again. My dad will get so mad."

"He can deal with it."

She laughed dryly. "You try telling him that."

Atticus ignored her and went down another hall. On the opposite end stood a group of teachers. Without thinking he turned into the nearest bathroom, which happened to be a girls.

"What-" Rory started, but decided to just drop it and follow him so they wouldn't attract any attention.

As soon as the teachers passed, Atticus spoke.

"Ok, so remember all the crap we stole from the office?"

"You're going to get in huge trouble for being in here."

"No one's going to come in-" He was cut off by the footsteps of someone walking onto the tiled floor of the bathroom, and by Rory stuffing a scarf over his head. They were standing by the sinks, and Rory stood in front of him so he was mostly blocked.

"Alice, you look so cute with short hair." Rory said loudly, raising her voice an octave higher than usual. It took Atticus a minute to realize she was talking to him.

"Uhh-" Rory stepped on his foot and he raised his voice. "Thanks Rory, that's what my mom said."

"Should I get mine cut shorter?" She asked. The teacher walked past without noticing, and went into the closest stall.

"What the hell?" Atticus whispered. Rory gestured for him to keep going. He continued with their painful previous conversation. "No, you like totally shouldn't cut it, it looks way better longer."

"Yeah, but it takes so much work to like wash it and brush it and stuff, you know? Like, conditioner doesn't even work."

"Yeah, I definitely know. Like, I used to conditioner my hair like five times a day."

Rory shook her head.

"I mean wash. I washed my hair five times a day."

She nodded. The teacher came out of the stall and glanced at the two of them before going to the sink closest to Atticus. She looked at them again, longer this time.

"Here Alice, your makeup is messed up." Rory said, pulling some mascara out of her backpack and handing to to him. He shook his head and tried to hand it back, but Rory only titled her head toward the teacher and glared at him. She wanted him to use the makeup as an excuse to turn away from the teacher to look in the mirror, since the women would surely recognize him if she looked closely. He slowly turned away and opened the mascara, painfully applying it to his eyes. After what seemed like an hour, the teacher turned off the sink and headed towards the door. She stopped on her way out.

"You ladies should head back to class, makeup can wait."

Rory and Atticus both nodded, but Atticus was careful not to look at her. She walked out the door. As soon as it closed, Rory breathed a sigh of relief and Atticus jumped towards the sink and started scrubbing off the mascara.

"It's going to smear," Rory said.

"Whatever." He mumbled. "How did we pull that off?"

"Well, you have kind of long hair and no offense, but you kind of look like a girl."

"I do not!" He objected.

"Whatever. So, tell me what's up."

He finished washing off the mascara (though there was still streaks under his eyes), and turned back around to face her. "We went through the files yesterday and it looks like our school always does terrible on testing, according to the scoring company. But, when its sent to the state, we have great scores. In the time between the scoring and being sent to the state, a bunch of money is pulled from the school's account."

"So, they're changing our scores? Paying someone in between?"

"I think so."

"What are we going to do?"

"Well, they're taking it from the donation money, which is basically all yours, so you could tell your dad."

"No way," she shook her head.

"Why not? It's a lot of money!"

"He has enough. Besides, I don't need him trying to figure out how I knew that."

"Are you seriously that freaked out? If you don't want to tell him, I will."

"No, that's worse. You do not need to ever talk to my dad."

Atticus frowned. Why wouldn't she just say something? This was important, and they spent hours working on it. "Come on, I let you meet my dad, why can't I meet yours?"

"Because-" she stopped. "Wait."

"What? Oh shit." He held his hand out to stop her from talking. "Ignore that. I didn't mean that."

She pushed his hand away. "Your dad? I never met your foster parents. I met Tony Stark. Your friend."

"Rory-" He begged.

"Oh my god," she stepped back. "Atticus. You're Tony Stark's son. You're Iron Man's son."

"Yeah, I know," Atticus snapped, clearly annoyed. "But thanks for reminding me."

"But... He doesn't know?"

Atticus looked away. "He doesn't need to."

"But, why are you always hanging around there then?"

"I don't know."

"That's kind of stupid."

"I know."

They stood in silence for a minute. Atticus looked away, trying to pretend like the ground as interesting, while Rory started at him. He could practically feel her eyes burning holes into the back of his head, so he turned around.

"We can't be friends." Rory said.

"Why not?"

"Oh my god Atticus, how can you be so stupid?"

"What do you mean?" He yelled.

"Think, idiot. What's my name?"

"Rory Hammer."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah..."

She sighed. How was he not getting this? "And when you hacked into the student records, what did it say my dad's name was?"

"Justin?" Atticus asked dumbly.

"Think."

"Oh. Ohhhh."

"Yeah."

"Well, this is awkward."

Rory nodded. "Yeah. See why we can't be friends?"

Atticus shrugged. "I see why you think we shouldn't be friends, doesn't mean we can't be friends."

Rory raised her eyebrows. "There's a ninety percent chance you'll end up dead."

"Only if your parents find out who my dad is."

Rory paused. "True."

"So we can still be friends, we just have to make sure our parents never end up learning about each other. It should be easy, I mean my dad doesn't even know he's my dad."

Atticus said.

"I guess..."

"No parents ever meeting means making sure we stay out of the principal's office, so we should probably get into class before it's too late to have an excuse."

Rory nodded. "Yeah probably."

They left the bathroom and started walking down the hall.

"Atticus?" Rory asked, laughing slightly.

"What?" He asked, turning around to glare at her.

She only laughed more. "Give me my scarf."

He looked down and realized he was still wearing the flower patterned infinity scarf.

"I kind of like it," he joked.

"Just give it back."

"No." He pulled it off before she could do it and held it above his head. Rory easily reached up and snatched it out of his hand. Atticus frowned as she smirked at him.

"I'm taller than you, idiot."

"Just in height, not in spirit." He mumbled.

"Shut up."